Would you like a small box with that genre?

Oh, the question of what genre I write in! It seems to come up in every non-science fiction interview I give. It's not much of an issue within science fiction/fantasy/horror literary communities. We know what we like to read, and we know it when we see it, no matter what genre classification is written on the spine of the book. Yes, we'll happily bicker about whether a particular story is science fiction or fantasy, and whether the term "slipstream" is a useful one, and whether fantasy and horror have intellectual rigour or not, and whether magical realism is just what you call fantasy when it's written in Spanish, or whether there's a core difference between the two, and whether Atwood and Vonnegut write science fiction, even though they both appear to have issues with the term. But we have language and concepts in common, and there is a growing, changing, contested canonical body of work. Outside those communities, so many people seem to get their knickers in a twist, being offended on my behalf that my work "gets" classified as science fiction or fantasy. But no-one imposed the terms on me; I chose them. I approached a science fiction and fantasy imprint when I was first looking for a publisher because I'm a fantasy and science fiction writer. Those are the fiction genres in which I read most often, and that is largely the body of literature to which I'm responding when I write. As to what I write, you could, as I do, use the terms fantasy, science fiction, magical realism or fiction as they seem appropriate to you. Or you could choose some other classification. Whatever floats your boat.

Speaking of floating one's boat, I also write sexually explicit fiction sometimes. People use a lot of names for that, too; including porn, erotica, and wank stories. Makes no never mind to me which term you use for it, but please don't try to convince me that there's a difference between porn and erotica, and that one is better than the other. Now, whenever I say that, someone takes it upon her or himself to do exactly what I just asked them not to; namely, to try to set me straight on the supposed difference between porn and erotica. Really. Don't. It's always the same arguments, and they simply don't convince me.